Rose Jordan, waiting for him.
Moving down her body, he pulled her
legs over his shoulders.
Cabe Dawson’s dark head covered her
pussy. She could feel herself growing
wetter by the moment. She’d wanted him
inside her, but now—well, maybe now
waiting wasn’t so bad. Cabe Dawson was
driven. Determined. And right now, he was
hell-bent on giving her pleasure. A woman
could live with that.
Hell, just knowing that she was wide
open to him, that he was looking at the
most intimate part of her as his warm
breath feathered over the sensitive flesh,
she couldn’t stop herself from moaning.
“Cabe.” She was so close to begging.
One big finger stroked down the very
core of her, parting her folds, and a bright
shock of pleasure fired through her. She
hadn’t known she could feel that intensely
or that Cabe Dawson could be so
impossibly gentle. She was so close to
coming.
“Apples,” he said, his voice husky.
“You smell like apples.”
Then he lowered his head, covering her
with his mouth, and thinking became
impossible. He gave her more than any
fantasy or lover she’d ever had. His tongue
parted her, dragging through the thick, lush
folds. Each wicked stroke pushed her
higher, feeding the fire burning her up. Her
hands fisted the sheets, holding on because
she was coming apart.
“So good,” he whispered hoarsely
against her, the raw words making her jerk
in his hold.
His lips and tongue slipped deeper into
the soaked folds of her pussy. So good.
Yes
. When he found her throbbing clit, the first pass of his tongue was gentle. The
second was harder. She wanted to scream,
but all she could do was hang on and ride
that wicked, wicked mouth of his.
Tension built inside her, too sweet, too
fast. She wanted this moment to last
forever, but the little quivers were already
finding her, and she started to come.
“Now, Cabe,” she groaned. “I want you
right now.”
He came up over her, and she heard the
welcome sounds of a foil packet opening
as he rolled on a condom.
“You taste just right,” he whispered, the
broad head of his cock finding her opening.
“Don’t talk,” she demanded. “Move.”
His masculine chuckle warned her he
wasn’t done playing with her. He was still
going to make her
wait
for the pleasure.
Sure enough, he stroked just inside her,
stretching her. God, he was so big, and so
there
. His fingers then threaded through
hers, pinning her hands to the bed as he
penetrated her one slow, delicious inch at
a time.
Her hips bucked upward, demanding.
“Faster, Cabe,” she begged.
She didn’t want to wait. She was so
very, very done with waiting.
“If you’re sure, darlin’,” he groaned.
“Now,” she panted, reaching for the
pleasure he could give her. Right now she
wasn’t alone. Right now, she belonged
exactly where she was. In Cabe Dawson’s
arms.
Then he was giving her what she
wanted. Hot and hard, that cock of his
driving into her, driving her inexorably
over the edge into complete surrender.
After their breathing had returned to
normal, her last thought before she let
herself go, tumbling into sleep in his arms,
was that Cabe Dawson had been well
worth the wait.
When she drifted awake, hours later, the
sheets were tangled around their legs, and
the bedroom was full of evening shadows.
She could hear the faint sounds of others
moving around in the house. That was
going to be awkward, if Seth and Rory
caught her leaving Cabe’s room. But she
needed to go. The restlessness was back,
an itch she couldn’t quite scratch.
At some point, Cabe had draped himself
over her, pinning her to the bed. She
wanted to get closer, to surround herself in
his delicious heat. Even though she should
be getting up. Should leave. When she
turned her head, she saw his hat sitting on
the bedside table next to the orderly pile
he’d made of her clothes. That was her
Cabe.
He wasn’t hers, though. She couldn’t
afford to forget that truth. Whatever they’d
done here in his bed was just a temporary
thing. Because, if she let him, a man like
him could swallow her up, and she needed
to keep on standing on her own two feet.
He was a play-by-the-rules kind of man,
honorable to the core, while she needed a
little more gray in her life. She didn’t
expect him to understand.
The arousal was still there, quieter now,
but a slow, sweet heat, a low ache inside
her. Cabe Dawson was a threat to her
heart.
It was already too late, she realized. She
already loved him. Maybe she always had.
Even as she admitted that to herself, she
tried to roll away, but his large body
stopped her. He was awake. There was no
shifting Cabe Dawson once he’d made up
his mind.
“I need to go,” she said quietly.
“Stay a while,” he countered, drawing
her even closer. “There’s no need to rush
off.”
There was. There was every need. She
wasn’t supposed to fall in love with him,
wasn’t supposed to want more than
whatever memories he could make for her.
If she stayed here much longer, in his arms,
she’d be hoping for a future that couldn’t
happen. She’d screw it up, wouldn’t be
what he needed or who he needed.
But, God, she wanted to be perfect for
him.
So, so badly.
Chapter Five
H
e was a bastard for destroying Rose’s
dream. The lowest kind of bastard,
because she believed Cabe was
helping
her. Hell, she’d even thanked him when
he’d volunteered to bring the local
inspector and a different contractor back
out to Auntie Dee’s to meet with her. “You
should know what you’re looking at. Get a
second opinion,” he’d said, and her face
had lit up with that smile of hers before she
hopped in that Honda Civic of hers and
headed out to Auntie Dee’s to wait for him.
Yeah. He was low, all right.
Twenty years of ranching, and he’d
watched other cattle ranchers come and go.
He’d gone to their auctions and put in his
bids on what was left of their herds and
their equipment. Ranching wasn’t an easy
business, and no water meant no cattle. It
was that simple.
Now, she stood on the sagging porch,
picking at the ribbons of paint curling from
the railing while she looked over a tube of
architectural drawings she’d brought with
her, but she didn’t look defeated. Not his
Rose. The inspector had already left—
after pointing out a dozen-plus code
violations she’d need to remedy before
he’d even consider giving her a certificate
of occupancy—but the contractor either
smelled blood in the water or was
enjoying the sight of Rose Jordan, because
the guy was taking his own sweet time
coming up with a bid that was all but
guaranteed to have her turning green.
Her getup was just plain ridiculous.
She’d chosen a pair of itty-bitty denim
shorts that cupped her ass and actually
stopped short of covering her cheeks.
Then,
as
if
those
shorts
weren’t
impractical enough, the four-inch wedge
sandals gave her legs that went on for
miles. Cabe should have been worried
about her breaking an ankle. Instead, he
was imagining those legs wrapped around
his waist.
Just like the damned contractor was.
Making her vision a reality wasn’t going
to be easy. Lonesome didn’t have the
contractors she needed. The house needed
more major repairs than he had fingers.
And yet her passion for her dream was
infectious. He wanted to give her what
made her happy, protect her from the blow
that was about to fall.
He could do it, too, he realized. As long
as he consigned his ranch to hell.
She caught his skeptical glance. “You
expect me to fail,” she accused him.
No, that wasn’t it. This wasn’t about her
succeeding or failing. This was about the
house, the property, the water, and the
sheer impossibility of her living there.
“This house needs major repairs.”
“But it could be fixed,” she argued. She
plopped down onto the top step of the
porch. The contractor had disappeared
back inside to “check one more thing,”
even though Cabe couldn’t imagine what
the man hadn’t investigated already.
“You’d need thousands of dollars,
Rose.” He leaned back against the porch
pillar, crossing one booted foot over the
other. “Tens if not hundreds of thousands
of dollars. That’s what it would take. Do
you have that kind of cash?”
“I could try for a mortgage,” she
countered stubbornly, crossing her arms
over her chest. That defensive movement
pushed her breasts up into luscious little
mounds. He wanted to carry her back to
bed, make her forget all about this crazy
dreams of hers. He’d make it up to her.
She’d get over it. Wouldn’t she?
“We both know a bank won’t lend on
this place. There’s no value in a tear-down
house.”
“Auntie Dee’s place is not a tear-
down.” Fingers rubbing her arms, she
tilted her head back, letting it hit the
railing. Maybe, with her eyes closed, she
hadn’t noticed the shower of paint flakes.
“Not to me,” she said, but now she
sounded tired. “Even though I can see how
you’d think it was. This place is worth
fighting for.”
He’d hoped this second inspection
would wear her down. This despair should
be what he’d wanted, he told himself.
“So what is it you want me to do, Cabe?
Just up and leave?” She opened her eyes
and looked up at him. “Is that why you
brought the inspector and the contractor out
here? So they could tell me the same things
you had, only with an even longer checklist
of everything that’s wrong with the place?”
Yes,
he thought. That was exactly what
he’d wanted. He narrowed his eyes. “Be
reasonable, Rose,” he said, because he had
no intention of answering her question.
“Tell me what’s
right
about this house.”
She shook her head as if she couldn’t
believe he was asking that particular
question. “This was our
home
.”
“Four walls”—barely—“a roof. And a
door.” He shrugged. “I don’t see anything
so special.”
“No, you wouldn’t. But Auntie Dee
would sit right there”—she waved a hand
at the two-seater swing behind them—“and
I’d sit right there beside her. You can see
the sunset from here, and we’d watch the
mountain go all pink and gold. Sometimes
she’d tell me stories about places she’d
gone, people she’d known before she
settled down in Lonesome for good. Other
times we’d just sit there together. It was
my job to push.” She stared at the swing as
if she could still see the woman who had
taken her in. As if that old woman really
had been the center of her world, even
after she’d up and gone.
“Every night,” she said quietly, “we
came out here and we sat and we smelled
the roses. She said that mattered, taking
that time together. She said she’d planted
that rosebush when she first moved in here.
She joked it took up more space on the
porch than she did.”
The rosebush was a Lady Banks. The
yellow flowers had climbed over the roof
of the porch, the sheer weight of the
blooms threatening to bring the whole thing
down beneath its canopy of green and
yellow. Rose reached out, stroking a soft
petal, lost in thought.
For the first time, he wondered what it